At the small veteran’s memorial near the town’s dying mall, I describe war to children who have
already seen it. On primetime war is clean. They are surprised to find the soldiers have nicknames
like “Spud” and “Sugarbaby.”

When they read the words aloud, I can’t help picturing a happygo luckydragshow in which each
male listed on the dark marble plaque is aping something less rigid than the word Masculinity.

It’s a deadly performance that ends in a monument and a coffin and usually nothing as complete as
a carcass.

We discuss conflict between nations— international conflict— as a carload of teens drives past,
slowing just long enough to honk and scream, “Hey MILFFFFF.”

Also, “when’s the last time you got fucked?”

Because a woman doesn’t protest if she gets it.

The kids look up alarmed. I tell them not to worry— it’s a rhetorical question. Like politics. The
performance of masculinity recedes amid car horns and traffic. We leave a fistful of golden
dandelion flowers near the center of the monument and walk back to the car. The sun warms our
back. I’m sorry, I whisper to no one in particular. Traffic, the wind, a whipper-snapping flag. But
there is shame for what we’ve become. People who leave anonymous flowers.

A mother and her children. Some body that isn’t getting served.

first love and i’m a liar

First love: the first sharedLonely.

A Lonely that couldn’t exist
if it weren’t for the body of
another person uncleaved
from your corpus. Love
would be nothing without its
foundational myth.

Once joined. Thunder torn
asunder.

His name was
_____________

If I say his name, I might be
subject to the enchantment of
how it first felt to call a
separate name, “Mine.”

It was like Hedwig and the
Angry Inch but without the
cool graphics. We are a
painting left out in the rain
bleeding rainbows of pale
watercolors I shouldn’t let
dry. But first love stays wet
and never carcass.

His name was Patrick. It
sounded like English cottage
bricks and impossible moor-
gray sky.

His name was Patrick. I
thought about The Secret
Garden when we lay in a
hammock with our names
strung like rope between us.
Our names hold us up and oh
the things we’ll say to keep
from falling. To keep from
waking up and my husband
hates to hear about Patrick.
Not that old swine again. I say
he should have fucked his first
love so he could have found
something to lose. It’s not love
if you’re not risking much and
nothing is first if, at the time,
you kept it in place, a close but
unconsummated second.

“You are obsessed with detritus. With what could still die of the past.”

I reckon.
With Patrick it was the splendor of the space between notes. Something we could not say without
destroying. A silence we protected.

First love is like music you never flesh out.

The silence gaping open.
Only in retrospect can we
hear it whole. As one piece.

Only later do we discover
the melody.

hide and wait

The interim episodes when neither day nor
night have established their dominance and
everything is half-seen, shaded. Sunrise and
sunset with a shudder in transitions, the scent
of soil and hummus, the heavy dolor of what
might be a period.

I wait for her in the kitchen when the spirits
of the world slip between the lines of light
and darkness, the traffic of bewildered
children roils the house.

I hide behind the door
I’ve left open.

Knuckles turn white from the pressure of
holding doors closed.

The bitty noises of love distract me from the
spirit of love I am seeking.

Someone calls my name from down the hall
but the voice is not hers.

The voice is flesh and blood drips from the
teeth it needs me to kiss and cover.

The spirit I don’t expect leaves a shadow on
the counter, a hole of absconded light.

The shape is not hers—not lithe or hungry
enough to race down black diamond slopes,
the brushfire blazing in her eyes.

Did she want me to follow? To race and risk
what breaks in tumble?

All the shadows careen through a room where
darkness swallows what I’ve seen and
longing, itself, bids the sight.

It is not yet night.

I carve lines into the doorframe with a blunt
steak knife— the spirits courted to eliminate
hers.

Come mother, come back if only for the
instant before nocturnes steal you again.

Come here, mother, behind the door I will
slam to lock you in.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and raised in Alabama. Her most recent poetry project, Ipokimen, is available from Anchor & Plume Press (November 2016). [http://anchorplume.bigcartel.com/product/ipokimen]. These pieces are from an unpublished chapbook titled, Coliva. A coliva is a traditional Romanian cake which one bakes on certain days to commemorate the death of a loved one (in this case, a mother).